Teenage Rowling was 'extremely intelligent'

A Minnesota educator reminisces about his days as a foreign student teacher in the UK, when 13-year-old Joanne Rowling herself was a pupil:

"I was contacted by the teachers in England who I had stayed with, and they told me that the Harry Potter author had gone to Wyedean at the same time I was there and perhaps I knew her," [Dale] Neuschwander said. "It had been a long time, but I went to the grade book that I kept from that time and when I saw the class that she was in and her grades, I remembered her."

It was easy for the teacher to remember his former pupil. Her writing shone.

"She got straight A's and A-pluses in creative writing," he said.

When Neuschwander wrote to Rowling in 2000 to congratulate her on publishing Harry Potter, the author wrote back and her handwritten letter (the contents of which are in the full article) now hangs on his wall.